Something Rotten by Jasper Fforde Book Review

Something Rotten (Thursday Next Book Four) by Jasper Fforde Book Review

Pub. 2004 - 389 pp

Something Rotten is the fourth book in the Thursday Next series by Jasper Fforde; a series which can rightfully claim to have a cult-like following, its members holding regular festivals in the protagonist’s hometown of Swindon, England. The books are thoroughly addictive. All you have to do is read the first book, The Eyre Affair, and you’ll also be swept away in Thursday Next madness, just like me. It’s not a bad thing if you love a hilarious satire.

These books are stand-alone, but I highly recommend beginning the series with the first book. Although, Thursday’s father, the newly reinstated chronoguard, may accuse me of being “too linear”. Moreover, spoilers will be given on the first books in the review below.

In the mid-1980s world of Thursday Next, some people are able to jump into and out of books, interacting with fictional characters as they go along. Literature is the single most important aspect of life and Thursday is a special operative in the literary detectives unit. People change their names to match that of favorite characters or authors, Shakespeare is a hotly debated topic, and book sales can be death matches. Extinct animals are cloned for pets and sterile Neanderthals were brought back for a short time.

Something Rotten opens up two and a half years after the end of The Well of Lost Plots. After her husband was eradicated from time by Goliath Corporation and the Chronoguards in an extortion attempt, Thursday had escaped into the BookWorld where no one could follow her. She accepted the position as head of Jurisfiction, an agency within the world of fiction that polices the BookWorld, as she bides her time trying to figure out how to get her husband back from the dead, and while she waits out her pregnancy. Two years later, and after narrowly missing the escaped Minotaur from The Well of Lost Plots in an obscure western, Thursday has decided that she’s had enough. She hangs up her badge and decides to reenter the real world.

A lot of things have changed since she’s been gone. Goliath Corporation and the Chronoguards are no longer searching for her. Goliath is now in the process of changing into a major religion, complete with its own faith system and a range of gods, demigods, saints and priests. To make up for all of its past heinous acts, it is offering apologies and resolutions to all the corporation has wronged. Meanwhile, Yorrick Kaine, an escaped fictional character from the BookWorld, has managed to become the English Chancellor. And when her father, a newly reinstated member of the chronoguard (previously killed in another book) stops time to see her, Thursday discovers that someone has hired the Windowmaker (a typo that stuck) to kill her and that if Swindon’s croquet team doesn’t win the Superhoop this year, Yorrick Kaine will become president and cause World War III. What’s more is that Kaine has spurred anti-Danish sentiments and banned all things Danish, especially Danish books.

Thursday has a lot of tasks in front of her: Getting her husband back through Goliath’s new endeavors to apologize and right its previous wrongs, getting her job back as a literary detective after a two-year hiatus, making sure Swindon wins the Superhoop to prevent a future apocalypse with the help of some Neandethals, figuring out how to tactfully deal with the woman trying to kill her since her assassin is married to her dear friend Spike (vanquisher of the undead), saving the life of the president from beyond the grave six days before he is scheduled to die, keeping Hamlet (the fictional character who left BookWorld on a temporary holiday to accompany Thursday) safe from the sudden Danish hatred, dealing with Hamlet’s emotional pains upon viewing the way he is portrayed in plays, trying to find an outlawed clone of Shakespeare to fix the changes that were made to Hamlet in the BookWorld after Hamlet left and Ophelia revolted, saving Danish books from ending up in the book burnings although she is now in charge of manning the operation to seek and destroy, discovering which book Yorrick Kaine is actually from, and hiding from her mother the fact that a gorilla is her child’s babysitter.

This time she finds help where it is least expected: through a careful negotiation with a group of croquet-playing neanderthals, from the Cheshire Cat and the Blue Fairy, from her father in a different time, from the woman trying to kill her, from a gorilla married to a fictional character, from the alien Emperor Zhark, from her legally appointed stalker Millon de Floss, from her past self and from her future self.

The action is non-stop in Something Rotten. As soon as she arrives home in Swindon, a host of problems surface and are dumped upon Thursday Next who is given about a week to prevent things such the destruction of Hamlet as we know it and worldwide imminent doom. Compared to the previous book, this one doesn’t suffer a dull moment.

Throughout this book, the reader is slowly integrated into the world of Thursday Next without a gargantuan info-dump, making it a stand-alone novel. With the amount of topsy-turvy occurrences which have transpired in previous books, I wouldn’t think Fforde would be able to create a novel independent from its precursors. Yet, he managed to deftly explain this odd world in a few sentences here and there, bringing the reader up to speed when it was needed and only then. Ffordes’s cleverness never ceases to amaze me.

So far, Something Rotten is my absolute favorite out of the series. For the first time in this ridiculously hysterical journey, I’d found occasion to cry. There were also moments interlaced with utter joy when I found myself fraught with anger. It is this inexplicable wide range of emotion that had me all but hugging the book. And there are still three more to go.

We reserve the right to remove any content at any time from this Community, including without limitation if it violates the Community Rules. We ask that you report content that you in good faith believe violates the above rules by clicking the Flag link next to the offending comment or fill out this form.

Blog Author

Rebecca Skane

Rebecca is the founder of the Portsmouth Book Club. Google it. It's free to join! Follow me on Goodreads! Read Full